Before anything else, understand that if you want to use a VPN you should be paying for it. Free VPNs are either selling your browsing data in aggregated form to researchers and marketers, or giving you a paltry amount of data transfer every month. Either way, a basic rule of thumb is that a free VPN will not protect your privacy in any meaningful way.
Jurisdiction – PureVPN has a fairly strong jurisdictional advantage. Hong-Kong is far from the watchful eyes of European governments and the 14 Eyes alliance. The state of the Internet in Hong Kong is one of the freest in the world. The government in Hong-Kong does not sweep online content under the rug of censorship. However, acts like distribution of child pornography are criminalized (as they should) by law and fall under the cloak of censorship. So, the jurisdiction of PureVPN should be a reason enough to compel privacy-conscious users to get this VPN.

Latency: This is closely tied to proximity, but is also affected by the amount of traffic on the networks between you and the VPN server. Latency measures the time it takes to send and receive a request from a server, also called ping time. Many VPN apps will allow you to see which server offer the least latency, usually measured in milliseconds. If not, you can connect to the server and use a terminal or command prompt to ping a website and view the time.

Some VPN services provide a free trial, so take advantage of it. Make sure you are happy with what you signed up for, and take advantage of money-back guarantees if you're not. This is actually why we also recommend starting out with a short-term subscription—a week or a month—to really make sure you are happy. KeepSolid VPN Unlimited offers a one-week Vacation subscription, for example. Yes, you may get a discount by signing up for a year, but that's more money at stake should you realize the service doesn't meet your performance needs.
A powerful VPN service, SaferVPN is very useful in hiding users’ IP addresses. It also allows access to blocked websites or safely share information. Privacy is also ensured as the service uses high security protocols. It offers a unique Automatic Wi-Fi Security feature which instantly activates a secure and encrypted VPN connection as soon as someone’s device connects to an unsecured Wi-Fi connection — automatically protecting them from public Wi-Fi threats. Likewise, it features single-click applications for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Chrome.
NordVPN, for example, has well over 4,800 servers across the globe. If you live in the US, you're likely to find a nicely uncrowded server close by. The ubiquity of its servers also means you're likely to find a server nearby no matter where you travel. Private Internet Access and TorGuard are notable for being the only VPNs we've yet reviewed that have more than 3,000 servers.
We also dove deeper into the desktop apps of the top-performing services. Great apps have automatic location selection, easy-to-use designs, and detailed but uncluttered settings panels. We set up each service’s Android app on a Samsung Galaxy S8 running Android 7.0 Nougat. We took into account how easy each one was to set up and connect, along with what options were available in the settings pane.

Jurisdiction – From the point of view of privacy, nothing is more important than the jurisdiction in which a VPN provider operates. VPN providers based in countries like the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have to follow data retention laws and cooperate with agencies for surveillance purposes. However, if a VPN provider truly follows a zero-logging policy, then users can consider their privacy secure even if the VPN is based in one of the countries as above. Nonetheless, given the choice, you should avoid VPNs that fall in the jurisdiction of agencies notorious for their surveillance programs.

As we said above, there are plenty of drawbacks to free VPN services. If you need a full, trustworthy service with unlimited bandwidth you're going to need to sign up to a full, paid service. The best VPN right now is ExpressVPN. Prices start at just $6.67 per month - that's about the price of a pint of beer in the UK! And for that you get the best VPN in the world, without any security concerns, with 24/7 customer support, guaranteed access to Netflix US, almost constant uptime and a 30-day money back guarantee (no questions asked) if you change your mind. Check out ExpressVPN!
When we test VPNs, we try to get a sense for the impact a service has on internet performance by finding a percentage change between using the VPN and not using the VPN for several speed measurements. First, we run several tests without the VPN active, discard the highest and lowest results, and find the average of what remains. This is our baseline. We then do the same thing, but with the VPN active.
Something pretty great about Speedify is that you can use it for free without even making an account. The moment you install and open the software, you're immediately being protected behind a VPN and can do anything a user can, like change the server, toggle encryption on and off, set monthly or daily limits, and easily connect to the fastest server.
Latency normally results in a poor VPN connection. If you are connected to a VPN server that is far from your location, the chances are that your VPN speed will lag. An ideal way to turn your VPN account to a fast VPN connection is to choose your VPN location smartly. Your connections will become a high-speed VPN if you select a server that is near close to your original location, and it not overfilled.
The VPN server can be configured to use either Windows or Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) as an authentication provider. If Windows is selected as the authentication provider, the user credentials sent by users attempting VPN connections are authenticated using typical Windows authentication mechanisms, and the connection attempt is authorized using the VPN client’s user account properties and local remote access policies.
One of today’s leading VPN providers and another worthy mention on our list of top 20 VPN services, PureVPN is known for its service quality and customer support. The service has 450 servers in 101 countries, allowing users to surf the Internet and use any online solution without having to reveal their IP address. This is very useful to those who want to bypass Internet censorship.
If you’re a Mac user, don’t trust the software developer so blindly and take your cybersecurity in your control, the best way to control your digital life is using the best Mac VPN. All the above-mentioned VPNs have dedicated Mac apps and are potential enough to bypass geographical restrictions, access blocked content, and keep your Mac protected without compromising your connection speed. We suggest you go with ExpressVPN rather than others.

ProtonVPN is a VPN from Switzerland. The software is easy to use and provides all the features necessary to keep your data secure both at home and while on public WiFi. Servers are located around the world, and because ProtonVPN uses a Secure Core network of servers – it will provide fantastic speeds for streaming. Proton permits P2P for torrenting on some of its servers. In addition, it can be installed and used on five simultaneous devices. That means you can protect all your devices with one account. The VPN is zero logs (it never stores IP addresses) and the time of your last session is deleted every time a new session is started.

Most VPNs won’t keep any logs of user activity. Not only is this of benefit to their customers (and a great selling point) it’s also of huge benefit to them (as detailed logging can quickly consume disk after disk worth of resources). Many of the largest VPN providers will tell you as much: not only do they have no interest in keeping logs, but given the sheer size of their operation they can’t even begin to set aside the disk space to do so.
IVPN excels at trust and transparency, the most important factors when you’re choosing a virtual private network. After interviewing IVPN’s CEO, we’re convinced that IVPN is dedicated to its promises not to monitor or log customer activity. But a trustworthy VPN is only as good as its connections, and in our tests IVPN was stable and fast. IVPN apps are easy to set up and use with secure OpenVPN connections on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, plus a few other platforms. Extra features like automatic-connection rules and kill switches to block data on unsecured connections add protection and value that make it worth a slightly higher price than some competitors.
There are lots of good reasons why you need a VPN. The most obvious is that routing your traffic through an encrypted tunnel means it is much harder for people on the same network as you—say, at a coffee shop—to snoop on your activities. If the person who owns the network is a bad guy, spying on your activity and hoping to snatch a password or two, they'll also be foiled by a VPN. This also protects against a lot of other scary scenarios, like DNS poisoning. With that kind of attack, you type in a legitimate website URL but are forwarded to a phishing site designed to steal your information.
Speed should not be all you consider when shopping for a VPN. For one thing, your internet experience will almost certainly be faster without a VPN. For another, speeds depend so much on which server you use, where you are, what your network environment is like, and so on. You might find that the service that's lightning fast today is dog slow tomorrow.
Avast SecureLine VPN offers good overall performance and steady connections, and it was the best of the limited-feature services we tested in 2017. But at $80 per year for software installation on five devices, it's more expensive than any full-fledged VPN service that doesn't limit installations. A single Mac or PC license is $60, while iOS or Android licenses are $20 each.
When you're using a public Wi-Fi network, even a password-protected one, a VPN is your best friend. That’s because using public hotspots can be rife with hazards. From man-in-the-middle attacks to Wi-Fi sniffing, there are many different hacking methods that snoopers use to intercept your Internet traffic and steal your social media or banking passwords, files and photos.
There is a PPTP control connection between the IP address of the PPTP client using a dynamically allocated TCP port and the IP address of the PPTP server using the reserved TCP port 1723. The PPTP control connection carries the PPTP call control and management messages that are used to maintain the PPTP tunnel. This includes the transmission of periodic PPTP Echo-Request and PPTP Echo-Reply messages to detect a connectivity failure between the PPTP client and PPTP server. PPTP control connection packets consist of an IP header, a TCP header, a PPTP control message, and a data-link trailer and header as shown in the following figure:
Even when browsing online in the comfort of your own home, using a VPN is a pretty good idea. For instance, you may want to buy your little nephew a birthday gift online without being bombarded with toy truck ads for next six months. Or perhaps you need to do a quick research of health clinics without attracting your employer’s attention. If you live in the US, you may simply want to know that your ISP will not be able to sell your entire browsing history to the highest bidder.
Before anything else, understand that if you want to use a VPN you should be paying for it. Free VPNs are either selling your browsing data in aggregated form to researchers and marketers, or giving you a paltry amount of data transfer every month. Either way, a basic rule of thumb is that a free VPN will not protect your privacy in any meaningful way.

As we previously noted, we don't recommend relying on our picks to get around geographic restrictions on copyrighted content. The practice is likely illegal, and it violates the terms of service of your ISP, VPN, and content provider. On top of that, it often doesn't work—we couldn't access Netflix over any of the services we tried, and of the four streams we loaded on BBC iPlayer, only two worked a few days later.

Authentication that occurs during the creation of a PPTP-based VPN connection uses the same authentication mechanisms as PPP connections, such as Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), Microsoft Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (MS-CHAP), Microsoft Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol version 2 (MS-CHAP v2), CHAP, Shiva Password Authentication Protocol (SPAP), and Password Authentication Protocol (PAP). PPTP inherits encryption, compression, or both of PPP payloads from PPP. For PPTP connections, EAP-Transport Layer Security (EAP-TLS), MS-CHAP, or MS-CHAP v2 must be used for the PPP payloads to be encrypted using Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE).

IPVanish is a top pick, especially for Kodi and torrenting, due to excellent speeds, zero logging and extensive privacy tools. It’s ultra fast on local connections but less consistent internationally across a network that’s mid-sized for locations but super-sized for servers and IP addresses. Netflix is working but iPlayer is currently blocked, which is a shame as it’s otherwise fantastic for streaming.

Torrenting/P2P Support – IPVanish makes all torrent websites and clients accessible. There is no problem with IPVanish as far as support for P2P networking is considered. However, the fact that IPVanish is based in the US and subject to its laws makes it a poor choice if your main purpose of having a VPN is to download torrents. This is because companies have no power against agencies and if they are trying to monitor a specific user, the company would probably have no choice but to comply and leak user data. In short, do not use IPVanish for torrenting to ensure your safety.
We’ve shown you how to roll your own VPN using Hamachi, and even how to set up Privoxy to secure your web browsing once you have your personal VPN set up. Hamachi isn’t the only option: you can also download and configure OpenVPN (a free SSL VPN) on your own home server,, or if you have a router that supports it, enable OpenVPN on your home router so you can connect back to it when you’re abroad. Combined with Privoxy, you get the privacy and anonymity benefits of a VPN without spending a dime.
Business security and strength. Businesses aren’t immune to hacking and someone getting into your system to access consumer records could be a catastrophe and lead to significant losses for everyone involved. Some businesses operate on multiple networks, potentially leaving entryways for thieves. Remote businesses are becoming the norm and employees could become targets for passage into large and secure systems. Using a VPN helps prevent such situations from happening, regardless of whether or not you’re on a public network. Your network will be encrypted, and your business will remain secure.

Logging: When you connect to a VPN, you’re trusting the VPN service provider with your data. Your communications may be secure from eavesdropping, but other systems on the same VPN—especially the operator—can log your data if they choose. If this bothers you (e.g., you’re the privacy/security advocate or the downloader), make absolutely sure you know your provider’s logging policies before signing up. This applies to location as well—if your company doesn’t keep logs, it may not matter as much where it’s located. (There’s a popular rumor that US-based VPN providers are required to log, in case the government wants them. This isn’t true, but the government can always request whatever data they have if they do log.) For a good list of VPN providers that don’t log your activities when connected (and many that do), check out this TorrentFreak article.

Logging Policy – The logging policy of VyprVPN, in spite of its claims of being committed to user secrecy, is in fact not entirely ideal. This is because it keeps connection logs of users for the purported reason of troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes. However, this doesn’t seem like a convincing rationale. VyprVPN should consider revising its privacy policy and move towards the zero-logging model that many reputed competitors are following.
For two years running, Private Internet Access has performed the best in our network tests and remained the cheapest full-fledged VPN service we've tried. It has more than 3,000 servers worldwide, supports platforms ranging from Windows and Mac to open-source routers, and lets you customize your tunneling and encryption protocols. You can pay in bitcoin, and you don't have to provide your real name.

There are some minor disadvantages to using a dynamic IP. If someone who previously had the IP address you've been assigned did something nefarious on a service you use, it's possible that IP address might be banned. Usually, VPN providers are very careful about checking their IP addresses against blacklists, so the chances of this being a problem for you are slim.

Ironically, in many cases, the faster your standard internet connection, the more speed you “lose” in percentage. Even if you have a 50 Mbps connection and this interconnection is poor, you probably won’t be able to make the best of the VPN service. For example, if you have a 5 Mbps connection, you’ll lose just 10-20% of bandwidth, but if you have 100 Mbps, connecting to a VPN may cause you to lose more than a half of your speed.

Use IP packet filters on the VPN remote access policy profile to discard both inbound traffic on the VPN connection that has not been sent from the VPN client and outbound traffic that is not destined to the VPN client. The default remote access policy, named “Connections to Microsoft Routing and Remote Access server in Windows Server 2003” has these packet filters configured and enabled by default.
Hotspot Shield VPN works in most countries, but that doesn’t mean it’s always legal to use a VPN in a specific country. If you have any doubts about the legality of using a VPN in a certain country, always consult a qualified lawyer because laws can change quickly. If you’re still unsure, then it’s best to play it safe and abide by the most conservative guidelines of a country.
We have also taken into consideration the use of VPN protocols in our fastest VPN trial. All the testing are on PPTP and L2TP connection as they are designed to yield fast VPN performance to the end users. All the high-speed VPN tests are carried out using Speedtest.net, a service that is used by almost everyone to test their internet connection. Below are the baseline speed of our Internet connection without a VPN:
Due to licensing restrictions, iOS developers previously couldn’t implement OpenVPN connections directly inside their applications. Since that changed in mid-2018, a few providers, including IVPN and PrivateInternetAccess, have added native OpenVPN support to their apps. This makes a secure connection on any Apple device much easier than the old method that required a clunky third-party application and complicated connection profiles. Though we haven’t done performance tests on any updated iOS apps yet, our limited use of the updated IVPN app worked without any problems. Going forward, we wouldn’t consider a VPN provider that doesn’t include native OpenVPN support on iOS.
Required only when the VPN server is acting as a VPN client (a calling router) in a site-to-site VPN connection. If all traffic from TCP port 1723 is allowed to reach the VPN server, network attacks can emanate from sources on the Internet that use this port. Administrators should only use this filter in conjunction with the PPTP filters that are also configured on the VPN server.
In compulsory tunneling, the client computer places a dial-up call to a tunneling-enabled NAS at the ISP. For example, a corporation might have contracted with an ISP to deploy a nationwide set of FEPs. These FEPs can establish tunnels across the Internet to a tunnel server connected to the organization’s private network, thus consolidating calls from geographically diverse locations into a single Internet connection at the organization network.

I recently bought a PureVPN year subscription. Mostly i did it beacuse my internet provider around 9p.m. until midnight donwgrade the speed, ISP throttling at is best. At that time of the night i use it almost all the time to stream content on KODI, and without a VPN wasn’t possible at all. To guarantee the best performance in terms of speed i should use the Stream mode or any other option from the PureVPN app? (KODI is installed on a android device).

We hope that our take on fastest VPN service providers paid off well, and we were able to share all the important details on the subject. A little recap; VPN is undoubtedly a great invention, but when it comes to delivering high speed, a lot of VPNs fails. We have discussed many essential factors above that will help you with your search of high-speed VPNs. Remember, bandwidth is your biggest enemy in VPN speed also, and to give it a headshot requires a fast secure VPN installed on your PC and device.Throughout our fast VPN speed test, we have tested a dozen of VPNs, but if we have to recommend a single VPN only, then we would suggest you go with ExpressVPN – the all-rounder VPN!

A Mobile VPN is a worthwhile tool to have since it increases privacy, user satisfaction and productivity, while also reducing unforeseen support issues caused by wireless connectivity problems. The increasing usage of mobile devices and wireless connectivity make it more important to ensure that your data is being transferred through a secure network. It will allow you to access the internet, while staying safe behind a firewall that protects your privileged information.

Final Verdict – IPVanish is a decent VPN service with one of the most appealing user-interfaces. It is fast, both in connecting to servers and during actual Internet activity. It uses the modern AES 256 bit encryption and provides up to 10 multiple logins. However, it does not work with Netflix and is not a recommended VPN for torrenting. For everything else, it is a great VPN service. You can get a detailed view in our IPVanish review.
Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is a PPP authentication protocol that allows for an arbitrary authentication method. EAP differs from the other authentication protocols in that, during the authentication phase, EAP does not actually perform authentication. Phase 2 for EAP only negotiates the use of a common EAP authentication method (known as an EAP type). The actual authentication for the negotiated EAP type is performed after Phase 2.
SSTP, Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol is designed to work on Windows only. It is considered as a fast secure VPN protocol as it supports up to 256-bit encryption to route the traffic. SSTP uses SSL channels to pass all PPTP and L2TP protocol that makes the browsing journey secure and fast. It is also designed in a way to bypass intense geo-restriction and break the firewalls. The only demerit we see in SSTP fast VPN protocol is its limited support on OS and devices. Although, if you compare PPTP and L2TP parallel to SSTP, you will not experience a high-speed VPN connection, it is to understand that SSTP is more focused on delivery privacy coupled with adequate speed.
There are about 2,800 CyberGhost connection points in about 60 countries worldwide. You don't need to provide your real name, just a working email address, and can pay in Bitcoin to remain nearly anonymous. As with most full-fledged VPN services, you can connect directly from your operating system's network settings or use third-party OpenVPN software to do so. You can also select from among VPN protocols and set up a home Wi-Fi router to use CyberGhost all the time.

This is important to understand. Consumer VPN services protect your transmission from your location to their location, not from your location all the way to the destination application you're using. If you think about it, this makes sense: A consumer VPN service is operated by a completely different company than, for example, Facebook or your bank.

As unprecedented amounts of data are generated and collected every day, organizations seek to infuse the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to more effectively derive insights and new knowledge from data to optimize operations, create new products and services, and automate decisions. However, prior attempts at building and implementing do-it-yourself (DIY) platforms … Continue Reading...

ExpressVPN outranks quite a many VPN providers as it is well known for its overall remarkable performance. ExpressVPN speed is its unique selling proposition and it has one of the fastest VPN networks in the world. It comes handy both in delivering top speed and military-grade security. Having a wide range of servers located in 87 countries, ExpressVPN has this added advantage over its competitors. Although they don’t offer VPN free trial, their 30-day money back guarantee is superlative to all. It gives you enough time to use ExpressVPN for varied uses, hence to get satisfied with the performance. It also offers attractive features like the Zero-logging policy, unmetered bandwidth, multi logins, and unlimited switches that are considered as bliss for any VPN user. Below is the VPN speed test result for ExpressVPN, with and without a VPN connection. Read our complete ExpressVPN review here.

With hundreds of VPN services and clients available, it can be difficult to decide which one to use. We've extensively tested several popular VPN services that met three requirements: They had both desktop and mobile client software (with one exception), they had VPN servers in many countries, and they offered unlimited data use, at least in their paid versions.
Before moving on to the fastest free VPN, which are quite a few; we would like to inform you that numerous vulnerabilities are attached with a free VPN. We are not recommending you to use freebies for privacy and security concerns, as free providers use weaker protocols and encryption levels, and sometimes they sell your data to the third party and even keep logs as well. However, if unblocking websites is the only benefit you want to gain out of a free VPN then check out these three fastest free VPN providers that perform better than others;

MPPE provides only link encryption between the VPN client and the VPN server. It does not provide end-to-end encryption, which is data encryption between the client application and the server hosting the resource or service that is being accessed by the client application. If end-to-end encryption is required, IPSec can be used to encrypt IP traffic from end-to-end after the PPTP tunnel is established.

Auto-static refers to the automatic adding of the requested routes as static routes in the routing table. The sending of the request for routes is performed through an explicit action, either through Routing and Remote Access or the Netsh utility while the demand-dial interface is in a connected state. Auto-static updates are not automatically performed every time a demand-dial connection is made.
Then there’s the widespread surveillance by local and foreign governments. Through the Snowden leaks and years of follow-up reporting, we know that the worldwide surveillance structure is vast in scope and reach. While it would be illegal for police officers to search your home without a warrant, your browsing activity, messages, social media content, and other online information can be monitored, retained and shared among various government agencies, including across country borders.

For the formal testing, we used an HP EliteBook X360 1020 G2 notebook, an Asus ZenPad S8 tablet (for Avira Phantom VPN) and a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 phone (for Speedify). Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections were provided by a 200-Mbps cable broadband line. Each time we connected to a VPN service, we recorded how long it took to get online and noted how many times the service disconnected us.

We're not cryptography experts, so we can't verify all of the encryption claims providers make. Instead, we focus on the features provided. Bonus features like ad blocking, firewalls, and kill switches that disconnect you from the web if your VPN connection drops, go a long way toward keeping you safe. We also prefer providers that support OpenVPN, since it's a standard that's known for its speed and reliability. It's also, as the name implies, open source, meaning it benefits from many developers' eyes looking for potential problems.